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Two weeks ago, I raised the question of why the MSM shunned what I thought was a rather interesting press conference in which leaders of Democrats for Life attempted to trial-balloon a package of 95-10 legislation that would strive to slow the abortion rate by 95 percent over 10 years. Click here if you want to review that.
Peter Carlson of The Washington Post has great fun with the legacy of the three Bob Joneses who served as consecutive presidents of Bob Jones University, and with the tradition-breaking appointment of Stephen Jones as the school’s new president.
We could have started an entire blog during the past six months on the subject of the Democratic Party and religion. Check out this package at The Dallas Morning News — in the new weekly Points section edited by Rod “friend of this blog” Dreher — on the theme “Can the Democratic Party be fixed?”
Now here is an interesting media-relations question. What does it mean when a group of Democrats gets together to announce a package of legislation and the press conference merits a wave of coverage from the Christian Communication Network, the Conservative Voice and LifeNews.com, but the event receives no coverage at all — zero, zip, nada — in the MSM?
Diane Knippers was a friend of this blog, in that I worked with her (and other conservative Episcopalians) during the Lambeth Conference of 1998 and the Episcopal Church’s General Conventions of 1994, 1997 and 2003. I was not so close to Diane as to be overwhelmed by grief as she is buried today, but I feel keen sorrow for her husband, Ed.
This week, The Washington Times ran a three-part series (links here, here, and here) by religion reporter Julia Duin. The umbrella title for the series was “Faithless: God under fire in the public square,” and the 7,200-word package serves as an interesting look into the world of the Christian and secular activists who are fighting over how much religion should be allowed to shape public policy and public life.
Maura Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times reports today on President Bush’s plan to attend Pope John Paul II’s funeral, interpreting it as an effort to cultivate votes among Catholics:
Opinion polls are sharply divided in the coming U.K. general elections, expected to be called by Prime Minister Tony Blair for early May. According to the YouGov poll, published in The Daily Telegraph, the Conservatives are polling almost even with Labour. But The Independent comes in with bad news: a 12-point Labour lead.
What we have here, once again, is another hint at the divide inside the GOP between what White House scribe Michael Gerson described a few months ago as a consistently Catholic approach to public life and the Libertarian approach to social issues. The Holy Week (in the West) drama of the Terri Schiavo case is merely underlining what is already obvious. Here is New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney’s crunch quote, with another use of the soon-to-be omnipresent T-word: “My party is demonstrating that they are for states’ rights unless they don’t like what states are doing,” said Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut. . . . “This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy,” Mr. Shays said. The article contains only one clear quote making a case for the other side: “There’s a larger issue in play,” and Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, “and that is the whole issue of the definition of life. The issue of when is it a life is a broader issue than just a state defining that. I don’t think we can have 50 different definitions of life.”
